Under Western Eyes eBook

“There can be no doubt that now I am safe,”
he thought. His fine ear could detect the faintly
accentuated murmurs of the current breaking against
the point of the island, and he forgot himself in listening
to them with interest. But even to his acute
sense of hearing the sound was too elusive.

“Extraordinary occupation I am giving myself
up to,” he murmured. And it occurred to
him that this was about the only sound he could listen
to innocently, and for his own pleasure, as it were.
Yes, the sound of water, the voice of the wind—­completely
foreign to human passions. All the other sounds
of this earth brought contamination to the solitude
of a soul.

This was Mr. Razumov’s feeling, the soul, of
course, being his own, and the word being used not
in the theological sense, but standing, as far as
I can understand it, for that part of Mr. Razumov which
was not his body, and more specially in danger from
the fires of this earth. And it must be admitted
that in Mr. Razumov’s case the bitterness of
solitude from which he suffered was not an altogether
morbid phenomenon.

PART FOUR

I

That I should, at the beginning of this retrospect,
mention again that Mr. Razumov’s youth had no
one in the world, as literally no one as it can be
honestly affirmed of any human being, is but a statement
of fact from a man who believes in the psychological
value of facts. There is also, perhaps, a desire
of punctilious fairness. Unidentified with anyone
in this narrative where the aspects of honour and shame
are remote from the ideas of the Western world, and
taking my stand on the ground of common humanity,
it is for that very reason that I feel a strange reluctance
to state baldly here what every reader has most likely
already discovered himself. Such reluctance may
appear absurd if it were not for the thought that
because of the imperfection of language there is always
something ungracious (and even disgraceful) in the
exhibition of naked truth. But the time has come
when Councillor of State Mikulin can no longer be
ignored. His simple question “Where to?”
on which we left Mr. Razumov in St. Petersburg, throws
a light on the general meaning of this individual
case.

“Where to?” was the answer in the form
of a gentle question to what we may call Mr. Razumov’s
declaration of independence. The question was
not menacing in the least and, indeed, had the ring
of innocent inquiry. Had it been taken in a merely
topographical sense, the only answer to it would have
appeared sufficiently appalling to Mr Razumov.
Where to? Back to his rooms, where the Revolution
had sought him out to put to a sudden test his dormant
instincts, his half-conscious thoughts and almost
wholly unconscious ambitions, by the touch as of some
furious and dogmatic religion, with its call to frantic
sacrifices, its tender resignations, its dreams and
hopes uplifting the soul by the side of the most sombre
moods of despair. And Mr. Razumov had let go the
door-handle and had come back to the middle of the
room, asking Councillor Mikulin angrily, “What
do you mean by it?”